A Plan for the Vacation

Thank you very much for your correction, especially the parts about punctuation!
Indeed, I was careless about punctuation, as I'm not used to writing in English enough yet.

In Japan, there was a custom of so called "shain ryokou", 社員旅行.
All (or many) of the staff of a company (or a department of the company) take a trip together to be amused, refresh themselves and promote their mutual friendship. They usually went to hot spring villages.
It's a rather old-fashioned custom and maybe being forgot, but still remaining in some companies, especially in small ones. I think it's a custom native to Japan, as a company had been considered to be something like a big family in Japan.
But people are getting more individualistic, and today many employees would prefer to enjoy themselves without their bosses or coworkers in their leisure time.

Shouldn't it be "coworkers"?

This is a really nice custom! I wish something like this would be present in Poland! I'm sure after doing things like this together with your coworkers you start to think differently about jor job.

Are you sure you're not going to go? Seeing a dragon in a year of a Dragon would be pretty special :).

Interesting, Inukawa. One thing I love about coming here to Lang-8 is that I get to learn about other cultures (Japanese culture mainly because most of the people here are Japanese). I've learned a lot about Japan just from reading what people write about their lives.

Michal, yes, it should be "one of my coworkers". Good catch.

By the way, as a joke people occasionally write it as "cow-orkers". A cow-orker is someone who orks cows. What does it mean to ork something? No one knows.

Thank you for your correction, Michal-san. I'm always telling my students not to forget to put this "-s". I should be more careful.
In a typical "shain ryokou", the employees (and the managers) go for sight seeing, take a hot spring bath and enjoy a feast with many sorts of delicacies together. They usually play table tennis in yukata for some reason.

Our boss called me at the midnight on the next day (Maybe he was drunk). He said, "We are now planning to visit the 88 temples in the vacation! Will you come?", and I understood the plan had changed.
The tour of the 88 temples in Shikoku is another tradition of our country. In the traditional style, people walk from a temple to another and it takes many days. Some people do that by bus or taxi, and Boss is planning to do it by rental cars.

I didn't know the joke of "cow-orker". Thank you for telling me it, dangph-san. It's pretty funny. I'll tell it to my students.

There is an old animation, named "Kyojin no Hoshi", which is well-known to us. It''s a baseball animation and the main character of it is a high school student who is a talented baseball pitcher.
The theme song of the animation began with the phrase of "Omoikondara". It means "Once you have made a decision". But the word "omoi" can also mean "heavy" in Japanese, and the animation when the phrase is sang was of the boy who was pulling a heavy roller on the play ground.
So many people who saw it thought like this; "Omoi kondara? What's kondara? I don't know the meaning of the word. But, I guess, it must be the name of the roller!"

I know another word which means coworker, "colleague". I happened to find, in one of Chekhov's novels, a professor addresses his coworker as "Colleague" or some word like it, maybe a word from French.
It was interesting to me to know almost same words were used in Russia and English-speaking countries.

Japan is indeed a great country :). Lots of interesting customs. Recently I got two books about Japan's history and culture so I hope learn a lot of interesting stuff!! :)

There is also word "peer" that has similar meaning I think. But it's better if you check it yourself. I've looked it up, and I'm now not entirely sure if it's ok to use it for example when you talk about your colleagues from work. It seems that when used, its focus is more on a profession so "my peers" seems to include besides people from your company, people from the same profession but from different companies.
I really need to start paying more attention to vocabulary :(

I'm sorry I'm not much able to help much.

Dangph, is what I just wrote correct? I would appreciate your comment :).

I used to study psychology in the university, and I still remember the words like "peer counseling" or "peer pressure". But I've never used the word by myself, as I'm not sure of the usage of it, either.
In fact, this word always reminds me of another word "pear", the fruit, though the sounds of the two words aren't same. So the phrases "peer counseling" and "peer pressure" always sounded very strange and funny for me. :)

"Colleague" comes from the French word "collègue". English has lots of French words. If you take some English text and count the French words, maybe one in ten will be French.

In general the French words in English are more formal and abstract than the Anglo-Saxon ones.

That is the case with "colleague". It is more formal than "coworker". A professor at a university could say "my colleagues", but if an office worker said "my colleagues", they would sound a bit pretentious (if they weren't joking).

"Colleague" can also be used in an abstract way. For example: "Colleagues can sometimes be like family." It's abstract here because we are talking about colleagues in general, not about some particular people.

"Peer" (also French, originally) is even more abstract again. It just means someone of the same level.

So if we were talking about peer pressure among teenagers, then the peers of a teenager would be other teenagers.

If we were talking about "peer counselling", then the counsellors would just be other people who are like the people being counselled (that is, not professionals).

If a scientist writes a scientific paper that is peer reviewed, that means it has been reviewed by the scientist's peers, that is, other scientists.

Thank you for your very detailed explanation! The nuances of "colleague" and "peer" were close to what I had thought, but your explanation made them much clearer.
"Coworker" and "colleague" are translated into "douryou", 同僚, in Japanese. "Shigoto nakama", 仕事仲間, is another word for the same meaning, but we tend to say "douryou" rather than "shigoto nakama", as the former is shorter and easier to say.
I've also seen the phrase "peer review" before. I think "peer" doesn't have its precise equivalent in Japanese. "Nakama", 仲間, is close to it, but it also means "a companion" or "a partner". Maybe that's why we learned the phrases including "peer" without translation in the psychology classes.